CARL FROCH revealed talks to face Gennady Golovkin broke down after the former super-middleweight champion refused to fight at a catchweight 166lb.
The Brit puncher was in retirement after beating George Groves for a second time in 2014 when negotiations began for him to return and meet middleweight king Golovkin.
Carl Froch revealed talks to face Gennaidy Golovkin broke down after the former super-middleweight champion refused to fight at 166lb
GGG had always fought at 160lb and was unwilling to move up to 168lb where Froch had reigned as unified champion and proposed the pair met somewhere in the middle at 166lb.
But Froch – who had ballooned up to 13st 4lbs in retirement – revealed on his podcast the 2lb difference to 11st 12lb would have affected him too much with the super-fight falling through.
He said: “We were in talks with his manager. They were trying to get me down to 166lbs. That don’t sound like much weight, 2lbs below the 12 stone limit. I was a machine at 12 stone.
“I could not have lost another 2lbs and performed. They were just trying to drag me down that bit further.
“I just said, ‘Look, let’s make the fight and make it at 12 stone. You think you’re too much for me, you’ll back me up and knock me out, let’s do it at 12 stone.’
“Don’t forget I was out the ring, this was after I’d been retired a year, then the talks started to get a bit serious. They were just trying to drag me down to a weight division I wouldn’t have been able to do it in.
“At the time when we were talking, I was 13 stone 4lbs, a lifetime heaviest, so I’ve got to get myself down to 12 stone which would’ve been hard.
“And they were trying to drag me down even further and that’s why the fight didn’t happen.”
Froch – who has remained in retirement – famously posted on Twitter that he would have been “too big and too strong for GGG” – a phrase that still follows him to this day.
Nonetheless, the 42-year-old is still adamant his natural size would have steered him to a stoppage win against Triple G.
He said: “This is only gonna take five seconds – too big and too strong. Back him up, back him up, mess him up.
“In my opinion I’d beat him up because I’m too big and too strong for him. I might be wrong, we’ll never know, but I would back myself to be beat him.
“There will be a lot of people listening to this saying, ‘No, no, no, load of b*****ks, Golovkin would beat you. Eventually Golovkin’s power would tell, he’d land on you, he’d hurt you, break you down and stop you.’
“What I’d say to that is I’ve never been stopped, I’ve only ever been put down twice in my career and I got up to win both times.
“You can say either of us are a clear winner. I think I beat him by stoppage. I’d be hitting him that much, that hard.”
Froch lost only twice in a stellar career that saw him beat fellow Brit George Groves twiceCredit: Action Images – Reuters
GGG had always fought at 160lb and was unwilling to move up to 168lbCredit: AP:Associated Press
Source: Boxing - thesun.co.uk
